


Reason is a Liar

by JulisCaesar



Series: Reason is a Liar 'verse [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, F/F, Fluff, i swear really it's fluffy, i thought i should warn, really really fluffy until people start dying, there's blood, violence sort of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulisCaesar/pseuds/JulisCaesar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And if I am right?"</p>
<p>"Then I am wrong, and I will face the consequences. Are you coming?"</p>
<p>One Gallifreyan, too intelligent for her position. One human, too wild for civilization. A story that spans centuries, a billion miles, and two very different cultures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leela

**Author's Note:**

> charamei helped beta; posting once a day i SWEAR TO GOD
> 
> If you haven't seen The Invasion of Time, I've actually been told this is understandable (and good!) without it. I'd still recommend watching it though, because there's a lot of inside jokes. I wrote this before listening to any of Gallifrey, but it somehow still managed to stay within canon for that as well.

She wants to stay.

Not because of the people, with their heavy clothes and strange customs.

Not even because of the planet itself, abandoned and lonely without the respect it needs.

Because of one person.

One bizarre, fascinating, odd person who bemuses and inspires her in equal parts, wearing those same heavy clothes and partaking of those same customs, with a name unpronounceable to anyone else’s tongue, cold, calculating, and afraid of anything new, but yet –

She wants to stay.

 ~~~

She knows that many consider her ignorant, the Doctor among them. It does not bother her, which confuses the Doctor more than anything else.

What they fail to grasp is that she is perfectly aware of how much she does not know. One of the things she does know is the difference between ignorant and stupid.

This the Doctor does understand.

She is ignorant – but not stupid, and it would take someone stupid to miss the looks Rodan gives her, the long, confused, searching looks of someone fascinated by another and entirely unsure what to do about it.

She knows Rodan has a longer name. Rodan told it to her, the first night. She refuses to use it. Rodan is a suitable length for calling through the woods when animals are chasing her. The longer name is not.

She watches Rodan back, long, confused, and searching. This is not about sex. She has never been interested in sex, with males or females. What it is about –

Stupid she may not be, but ignorant she is, and she has no words for this.

 ~~~

When it’s all over, she watches him walk away with only a twinge of guilt.

Rodan is not there. She does not know where Rodan is, but she is not in the room to see the Doctor leave.

If she has a twinge of guilt, she has only a glimpse of what the Doctor must feel. This is his planet, she thinks, or it was, and he is more upset by this than he wants her to know. He will feel better to leave her guarding it.

She is torn between Rodan and the Doctor. The Doctor needs her, though she is replaceable to him. Rodan does not need her, but Leela thinks she can become unique to her.

She stays, only feeling slightly out of place. He expects her to follow and she does not. She does not like to disappoint him, but what he thinks he wants is wrong.

She does not have the words to tell him that, and Rodan is not there to give them.

So she takes Andred’s hand, because Andred is there, and this is an action the Doctor can understand, and she must stay, for his sake and for Rodan.

There is guilt, for deceiving him, but if he would open his eyes, he would not be deceived.

The excuses cannot cover the guilt of watching him realize that she will stay.

 ~~~

She makes Andred nervous.

It rolls off of him, hot and strong, and she thinks of telling him that he smells like a herd after she has killed one of its members. She holds the words back, though, because it is her fault that he is nervous.

“Leela,” he says, and his voice shakes, “I don’t know what I did, but –”

She laughs, and stops his mouth with a finger. He flinches away from her touch. “I did not stay for you,” she tells him, still laughing, and he relaxes.

“But – the Doctor – you told the Doctor –”

This time she chokes back the laughter. It is not his fault that he believed her. “Andred, where is Rodan?”

Andred blinks at her. “The technician?” he says, and his tone of voice tells her more about his opinion than she wished to know.

She moves, and shows him her knife. It is very close to his face, because he must be very stupid. She knows he must be very stupid, because only one so stupid would think that Rodan is lesser for being a technician. Rodan is brilliant, which is a word the Doctor taught her. “Andred,” she says, “where is Rodan?”

She is making Andred nervous again.

 ~~~

Rodan’s rooms are neat.

She approves. Neat rooms are a sign of one who is successful, because only one who is successful has the time to clean.

Rodan appears not to approve, and seems annoyed by her rooms.

This, like so much else about Rodan, confuses her. She stands in the archway that means beyond are Rodan’s rooms and stares, bemused, at Rodan, who is still wearing the same robes.

Rodan glares at the ground, at the walls, at her. “Why are you here?”

She is unsure where to start. She had not thought this far. Her plans stretched to leaving the Doctor, and beyond that she has been running, leaping from action to action. “I stayed behind,” she says, because it seems best.

“Obviously,” Rodan spits, and turns away.

“For you,” she adds, quietly.

Rodan stiffens. “You should have gone with the Doctor,” she says harshly, not moving.

She leans against the barrier between them. “Then who would tell you when reason is a liar and when it is not?” It is intentional, the echo, and she watches Rodan bow her head slowly.

Rodan’s rooms are neat, but Rodan’s emotions are not.

 ~~~

She is certain the chairs move when she is not looking.

She finds this confusing, and a little uncomfortable. She is used to standing up and coming back to find her chair in the same position. Even with the Doctor, the chairs did not move. Sometimes everything else did, but she always knew how to find her room, and everything in her room was always exactly as she left it. Now –

Now she stands and crosses to what Rodan calls a "viewscreen" and stares out at the shining silver dome, and when she turns back, her chair is gone.

Rodan's eyes flicker first to her, and then to the corner of the room. The chair is sitting there.

Rodan sighs. "You don't belong here," she says, eyes still fixed on the chair.

"Your words are true," she says, calm only because one of them must be and Rodan, surely, is not. "There is one bed, and it is small."

Rodan frowns. It plants a crease between her eyebrows that Leela would like to examine further. "No, I didn't mean –" Rodan stops and shakes her head. "Why are you here?"

"You," Leela says quietly. When she moves, her fingers come to rest on Rodan's arm.

When Rodan moves, her fingers come to rest on Leela's cheek. She is gloveless.

Years later, she will mark it as the First Touch. But now – all she knows is that Rodan is the most fascinating person she has ever met.

"Gallifreyans are touch telepaths," Rodan whispers and Leela can hear the question behind it.

She does not move except to smile. "You can see my thoughts."

Rodan does not smile back. "Only if you want me to. Do you – I shouldn't be doing this," she says in a nervous rush.

She makes to pull away but Leela grabs her hand first, holding it in place. It feels like when she stepped into the Shaman's tent and defied her god. There is that same scent of rebellion mixed with hope in the air. "Yes. I want this."

The chairs may move but she is never  _ever_  going to leave Rodan's side.


	2. Rodan

She is standing on the precipice of something at once terrifying and wonderful.

There are rules about touch telepathy. It is a thousand times more powerful than any other sort and so there are rules. To use it on an alien, not even a person (though she is not certain she believes that anymore), not a member of her House, not a political ally, not a life partner, and not as a method of interrogation –

It’s the scariest thing she’s ever done, even more so than leaving the Citadel. Even at that point, she could still turn back, still return to her previous life. But once inside Leela’s mind, she will have broken a thousand taboos. This is something even most criminals don’t do and the punishments are as horrible as they are legendary.

Leaving one hand on Leela’s cheek, she brings the other up to match it. “Contact.”

She falls off the precipice into Leela’s mind and doesn’t regret it for an instant.

~~~

They are one.

They are one and they are together and nothing else matters.

One is in the other’s mind but which is which is irrelevant.

They are bound to each other, trapped in a circle of sensations. They neither know how to escape nor want to.

They have been separate all their lives, a warrior too independent to serve and a technician too intelligent to obey. Now they are together.

They complement and reflect each other in ways neither had previously considered possible.

They are one.

~~~

 Rodan pulls back first.

Their minds peel apart. It feels disorienting for a moment, and then her world rights itself.

Leela’s smile has the force of both the suns. “Is it always like that?”

No, she wants to say. No, it’s usually painful and horrible, the only form of rape the courts acknowledge, the worst thing that can happen to a Gallifreyan because it leaves someone else walking around knowing everything about your mind. No, it’s usually performed by Time Lords on members of lower castes because laws don’t apply to Time Lords. Instead she looks into Leela’s bright blue eyes and thinks that she could happily spend the rest of both their lives with this alien. “Yes. I think – it could be.”

Leela makes a small, pleased noise. “I can stay, then?”

She stares at the alien for a moment, beyond confused and slightly overwhelmed. To stay, without a hope of rescue, on a planet whose inhabitants were notoriously xenophobic, in the belief that one of those same inhabitants would take her under their protection, the sheer amount of  _trust_  one would have to have, in  _her_ , someone she has known for not even a span –

The thought staggers her. “The Time Lords,” she says, scrambling for a verbal footing. “They will not like it. You are an alien and there are no aliens on Gallifrey. They’ll make you leave.”

Leela smiles, and draws her knife. The light in her quarters glints strangely off the blade, and Rodan thinks oddly that this must be the first time the light has seen a blade. “Then I shall leave them hip deep in blood,” Leela says proudly, and Rodan almost believes it.

But she knows too well the power of the Time Lords, how often she ran into, again and again and again, a glass ceiling that said, “Must have an Imprimatur to take this position,” watching the jobs she wanted to to those more qualified only by dint of being Time Lords and under qualified in all other ways, being interrogated over and over for the crime of asking for a higher position. It has taken her years to accept that she will never be given the full range of her capabilities, years longer to realize that maybe the Time Lords don’t deserve all of her.

She’s not sure they deserve all of Leela either. “You should go,” she says, and watches her own hearts break in two.

Rodan pulls back first, to protect Leela over her own safety, and it is in that moment that she knows herself lost.

~~~

"Do you want me to?"

"No. "

Such a simple word, to change two lives.

~~~

In the end, it’s easier than it has any right to be.

The Time Lords aren’t  _happy_  that she now needs supplies for two and are displeased that the second one is an alien, but Rodan has more friends than she realized, and Andred turns out to be very good at inserting the Doctor’s name at opportune moments.

 Two members of the High Council outright support them, for reasons of their own, and the rest are neutral, bar one (and Vansellostophossius opposes the majority often just to oppose the majority). Her new room –  _their_ new room is further away from Space Traffic Control, but it is large enough for both of them and K-9. Rodan isn’t paid any more than before, but somehow it buys more. They are comfortably forgotten by the Time Lords and Rodan prefers it that way.

Leela, however, is bored, stuck in the Citadel without a job, and as Rodan very quickly learns, a bored Leela is a destructive Leela.

She doesn’t talk to Leela about it, though she probably should.

It is easier than it has any right to be, but that does not mean it is easy.

~~~

They are, however, blissfully happy.

It confuses her, at first, that Leela calls everyone a Time Lord. She wastes three decispans trying to explain the castes to her before realizing that Leela knows all of the distinctions between the castes, she just doesn’t  _care_. After further discussion, Leela agrees to use correct castes – except for Rodan, who is always and forever a Time Lady.

This makes her far happier than it has any right to.

Some days Leela, with K-9 in attendance, follows her to work. Those days are the best. Leela talks with everyone, and easily befriends those who will acknowledge her. The Time Lord in charge (one Lord Kabranossavortisan) ignores her, with eir lofty arrogance, and Leela mocks eim for it, but other than that, most of the technicians at worst view her as a pet.

Damon, to Rodan’s surprise, does not. He is a Prydonian technician on his third body, and she has always seen him as quiet and rather stuffy. But the arrival of Leela made his mind light up, and her knowledge of the Doctor transforms him into a rebel waiting for an opportunity.

Some days even Andred comes down, ignoring Lord Kabranossavortisan’s protestations that the Prydonian Guard Commander need not bother himself with Space Traffic Control. He gets along well with Leela, and eventually with Rodan, and even befriends Damon, to mutual surprise. Rodan finds them one day standing in a disused corridor, gloves off, hands touching. They spring apart rapidly, but Damon’s grin tells her all she needs to know. Intercaste partnerships are banned, but Rodan shares her quarters with an alien and can hardly quibble about these things.

She tells Leela about it, that night. Leela laughs, head thrown back, eyes sparkling happily. Rodan wants to see that expression more often.

Other days are harder. Then they have several large fleets to get through and even Rodan has no time for Leela’s questions. Leela doesn’t talk much about what she does on those days, but the APC Net has a list of locations she has been banned from, and every time it grows longer.

Rodan and Damon rework the schedule as much as they can to keep Leela with them as many days as possible.

Their evenings are less consistent, although both of them find them more fun. There is one brief experiment early on, with both naked in bed that ends with them mutually disavowing sex. It was fun, but not engrossing, and there are better ways to spend the short Gallifreyan nights. They spend a lot of time lying in front of a simulated fire, for example, exchanging stories until Leela, human with a human’s needs, falls asleep in her lap. Eventually Rodan will gather her up and take her to their bedroom, where they sleep curled around each other for the few hours remaining till sunsrise.

She takes Leela to see the Looms the day after their experiment. Leela comments that only Time Lords could replace a simple act with a complex one, and the outing devolves into a tickling match that gets them kicked out.

On some evenings, Rodan hooks up K-9 to the Net and then to the viewscreen, and projects entertainment vids from both on and off world. On others, Leela teaches her to knife fight, Rodan accepts because it makes Leela happy, and surprises them both with her quick reflexes. Occasionally, they have friends over, but too many gawk at the “tame alien” for it to be a frequent occurrence.

Mostly though, they explore, Leea in front, Rodan making excuses to anyone they encounter. They find hidden corridors and boltholes, at least one forgotten exit from the Citadel, an illegal entrance to the Matrix (the only product of their adventures she ever bothers reporting), and countless abandoned monitors, some so old even Leela can use them without help.

They are blissfully happy, wandering through dusty hallways, and Rodan wishes this could last forever.

~~~ 

Their first fight is liveschanging.

She returns from work, tired and upset that she had to let a Sontaran fleet though (she has not forgiven them, even though it seems the Time Lords have) to find that Leela has broken the third viewscreen in three centispans. They haven’t the credit to replace it, and Leela knows that – or ought to.

It starts with yelling and goes downhill from there. Rodan is tired of cleaning up after Leela, is tired of making excuses for her, is tired of trying again and again to explain concepts that are mind-numbingly simple. Leela, meanwhile, is angry: angry at Gallifreyans of all castes for looking down at her, angry at the life she has chosen for not being perfect, angry at Rodan for being unable to help.

In the end, it is Rodan who takes it a step too far. “I never should have let you stay, mindless _beast,_ " she spits, and knows it to be too far. ‘Savage’ Leela accepts with a smirk, but ‘beast’ is a verbal attack.

Leela has her knife in her hand and is moving forward before Rodan can begin to grasp the volume of her blunder. “You have lost my respect, Technician,” she says tightly. She sheaths the knife and leaves at a run, K-9 trailing forlornly after her.

Rodan watches her go, wondering if it’s possible to heal heartsbreak.

Her lives lie in ruins, and she can only hope that Leela’s don’t as well.

~~~

If their first fight is liveschanging, it is  _nothing_  to their first make-up.

Rodan is midway through a fleet transition when it happens. Damon has been missing the past few days, and she has been working overtime to cover for him. It leaves her exhausted and prone to mistakes, but she sees no other option.

The transition is long and complex, and she is at a particularly delicate point when a noise surprises her. The transduction barrier rises and cuts the Mondan fleet in two, but Rodan does not care.

Leela is in her office, wonderful  _perfect_  Leela, wearing her skins and a smile that could light the skies on fire.

Rodan had expected never to see her again. She thought that Leela surely must have left the Citadel and joined the Outsiders, but it appears not.

Leela gives her a bright-eyed excited look that she hasn’t seen in  _ages._  “It is good that you are here. Follow me.” With that, she turns and runs down the corridor.

She wastes a moment’s thought for the Mondans, and then leaves a notice for Lord Kabranossavortisan about the problem before taking off after Leela, robes flapping.

Leela hasn’t gone far, and is waiting for her the next corridor down, hand outstretched. “I have a surprise for you,” she says bluntly.

Rodan frowns. She doesn’t normally like surprises, but as this seems to be Leela’s way of asking forgiveness and granting it at the same time – she takes her partner’s hand. “Where? And where’s K-9?” Even touching, Leela’s mind is silent to her unless she makes an effort, and that she will not do until Leela says she may.

“This way. With the surprise. Come on!” Leela drags at her hand, eager as Rodan has never seen her.

Rodan laughs, and lets herself be drug down the corridor.

They are headed for the TARDIS bays, though why, Rodan cannot fathom, and Leela refuses to answer any of her questions. When they reach the bay doors, they are waved through by a Arcalian guard, who has a sneer for Rodan’s Patrex robes and a wink for Leela. This fails to clear anything up.

Finally they half-walk, half-jog down one of the many lines of unmarked TARDISes. Leela drops her hand midway down only to leap into Andred’s waiting arms, laughing. Andred looks unfazed by Leela’s touch and is grinning broadly, as is Damon, also there and leaning against one of the TARDISes. K-9 sits beside him, tail cranking back and forth.

Everyone is grinning, in fact, except for Rodan, who is still confused – and very shaken, once she sees the key dangling innocently from Damon’s hand. “No,” she stammers. “No, no, no.”

“Yes,” Leela says delightedly. “We got you a TARDIS.”

Damon grins wider. “ _She_  got you a TARDIS. We just offered assistance here and there.”

Rodan shakes her head, unable to take her eyes off the damning key. “No, no, I – I  _can’t_ , I’m not a Time Lord, how am I supposed to fly her?”

“The same way as everyone else,” Damon says patiently, a kind touch against her mind. “Telepathy. This one’s male, anyway. Or has been since he got into storage.”

She barely blinks at that. All TARDISes are created female, but they don’t all stay that way. “How’d you get the key? How’d you do – any of this?”

Andred says, “Damon used to work here. Apparently they have not changed the access codes since then.”

Damon shrugs. “He’s a Type 51. Nobody cares about them at this point. One more or less here or there won’t set off any alarms.”

“Don’t lie,” Rodan snaps, worried as much for his safety as her own. “The Time Lords track all of the TARDISes. They’ll know.”

He laughs. “But that’s why I chose  _this_  one. He doesn’t like being monitored. Refuses to show up on any of their scanners.”

Hope bubbles in Rodan’s gut. “They can do that?” she whispers.

“If they want to.” Damon smiles gently. “It’s safe. You can leave, and they won’t find you.”

Rodan swallows, looking between the three conspirators. “ _Why_?”

The three exchange glances. Andred nudges Leela, who sticks out her tongue at him, but steps towards Rodan regardless. “Gallifrey is a prison,” she says bluntly. “I fight with you because I am trapped. If we leave, there will be less fighting.” She sounds only half certain.

“But why – why take me?” This is directed solely at Leela, and the others remain quiet.

Leela smiles, rushing up and hugging her. “Silly Time Lady,” she says softly. “You think I would leave you just because we  _fought_? You cannot be rid of me that easily.”

She freezes at the touch (nine days, seventeen hours, thirty-seven minutes, 19.3 seconds since she was last hugged) but eventually wraps her arms around Leela. “I think I might love you,” she whispers in Leela’s ear, in slow halting English because there is no word in Gallifreyan for that feeling.

Leela pulls back and smiles gently. “You are slow to recognize the truth.” She pauses for a moment, eyes fixed on her. “Come in.”

Rodan hesitates before placing one hand on Leela’s face. “Contact.” The moment she falls into Leela’s mind, she is met by emotions – love, hope, glee, adoration – all directed at her. She’s drowning in it and it’s wonderful. She’s missed this more than she has the words for, although that’s half the point: telepathy this intense is used for situations when words are useless.

 _Why_? Rodan sends through their minds. That’s not precisely how it works, of course: it’s more fluid, with emotions and senses and memories all merging to form the idea of the word ‘why’.

Leela sends a jumble back:  _you care for me here I am alien you still care why would I not return that you are home Gallifrey is not home Gallifrey is strange you are my_ home _I will not leave you ever._

It’s completely Leela and bewilderingly adorable. Rodan pulls away to find the key in the TARDIS lock already and Andred and Damon gone.

Leela gives her a soft grin. “We should go.”

It’s impossibly hard for Rodan to hold back an answering smile. “You first.”

Looking at her like she’s stupid, Leela unlocks the door blindly. “It is wide enough for us both.”

Rodan laughs and takes her hand. Stepping into their TARDIS with her partner/friend/roommate/co-pilot/lover in every important sense of the word, she thinks that the world could not get any better.


	3. They, 1

The first problem is that neither of them knows how to fly a TARDIS.

Rodan has the telepathy, and Leela the pieces of knowledge picked up from helping the Doctor, but neither of them really know. It doesn’t help that their new TARDIS has the factory settings up and that he is refusing to connect with Rodan.

It could end here, but neither of them feel like going back to a life they both know they don’t want. So instead Leela demonstrates that she knows how to put a TARDIS into flight.

As far as take-offs go, it’s not the worst Leela’s been through, and Rodan has never been on a TARDIS before, so she has nothing to compare it with. But it’s bumpy, and shaking, and their TARDIS makes a noise that could have come from the depths of hell, if either of them believed in such a thing, and right at the worst moment, with Rodan hanging tightly onto the plain metal console and wishing she had never been Loomed, Leela yells, “She is not a Time Lord!”

The shaking stops. Their TARDIS settles into normal flight and connects ( _finally_ ) to Rodan’s mind. She gasps, and sags on the console, eyes falling shut.

He’s huge, in her mind, a solid unmovable presence that cannot be altered or changed or persuaded. He cares nothing for her hopes and wishes, and wants only to upset the Time Lords. It takes her a minute, but she eventually shows him what she wants: to travel, to see all the things she has missed in a century and a half spent on Gallifrey, to help people, to learn – and most of all, to make Leela happy.

He ruffles through her memories in a strange, haphazard manner, and then withdraws slightly, exuding contentment.

Rodan braces herself on the console and gasps, air fluttering in and out of her tubes. “I think I passed.”

Leela laughs, resting a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Of course you did. Damon would not have chosen this one if he did not think it would turn out well.”

She doesn’t have quite the same confidence in Damon’s judgement, but Leela’s assurance is nice. Her TARDIS – no,  _their_  TARDIS, she supposes, given everything – their TARDIS rumbles comfortably in her mind. K-9 makes a noise that sounds disturbingly like a flubble and extends a probe to the console. There is a tense moment as their TARDIS studies him, and then the base of the console opens slightly and K-9 plugs in.

Leela smiles as Rodan leans into her touch. “Where to?”

“Rassilon knows,” Rodan says, riding the cliff’s edge between exhilaration and exhaustion. “Do you know how to navigate him?”

Leela looks at her strangely. “No? You do not either?”

Rodan puts a hand on the console, hoping vaguely that everything she has heard about TARDISes is wrong and that he can tell her how to fly him. Nothing changes, and she sighs. “No.”

Surprisingly, Leela laughs again, tugging slightly on Rodan’s shoulder to turn her. “That is good! Then we shall have adventures, like I did with the Doctor!”

It is impossible for Rodan not to return the smile. She flips a switch on the console, because it seems like the right thing to do. They are in flight, although their destination is both unknown and unknowable, but they are  _together_.

Life is perfect.

~~~

What Leela does not know how to do is land a TARDIS.

It comes as a surprise to both of them when he lands on his own with the normal cranking noise. The console room shudders hard enough to knock Rodan into Leela and then comes to a sudden halt.

They share looks. Leela shrugs and makes for the door. It is best to see what is on the other side. She has no wish to sit in the TARDIS and wait for someone else to decide her actions. The switch to open the doors is at the same place as it was on the Doctor’s. She presses it.

The doors creak open and they both stare out.

They have landed in a white corridor. It looks boring. Frowning, Leela steps out into it, spinning around. “It appears safe,” she calls back to Rodan.

After a moment, Rodan follows her. She closes the doors firmly. “Where are we?” The hesitation in her voice reminds Leela that her partner has only left her home territory once before.

“I am not sure,” Leela says, frowning. She rests a hand on her knife. “It reminds me – but no. It is not.”

Rodan steps closer to her. “What?”

Leela shakes her head, but the thought will not go away. “It seems almost like the TARDIS. The Doctor’s,” she corrects quickly.

“It’s not,” Rodan says. “It can’t be.”

They both look around. The walls are white. The floor and ceiling are grey. There is nothing in the corridor but a door at each end, and their TARDIS. It looks like a grey door with nothing around it.

From one end of the corridor, Leela can hear noises. “Yes, yes, I’ll take a look, shall I?” a voice calls.

Rodan squeaks. “I know where we are.”

Frowning, Leela moves towards the noises, towards the far door. “I do not,” she says, annoyed. She draws her knife.

The door bursts open before she can reach it. A familiar face stares down at her, eyes bulging. “Leela! What are you doing here?”

Leela grins. “Doctor!” she yells at the same moment as Rodan says, “Your Excellence.”

The Doctor frowns at Rodan and  _hmms_. Looking past her, he grins brightly, displaying all his teeth. “You brought a  _TARDIS_.”

“Not intentionally,” Rodan mutters.

The Doctor brushes at his hair. It springs back as soon as he lowers his hand. “Well.” He looks at Leela, still smiling. “Well,” he says again, “it wasn’t Andred.”

Leela moves her feet very slightly. “No.” She isn’t ashamed of Rodan, not really, but she had lied to the Doctor, and she does not like to lie.

“And – oh, best do this right, hadn’t I? You have my blessing.”

“For whatever that is worth,” Leela mutters, smiling.

“Quiet, savage,” the Doctor tells her jokingly. “Now – why  _are_  you here?”

Rodan looks at Leela with a brief soft smile before answering. “Our TARDIS landed here. I – _we_  can’t fly him.”

The Doctor swipes at his hair again. “Can’t or don’t know how?”

“Is there a difference?” Rodan asks, tilting her head.

Grinning, the Doctor walks around them, towards their TARDIS. “Of course. You’re a Technician, you  _should_  have the circuits needed to connect with him.” He frowns at the door. “Key.”

Rodan hands him the key, shaking her head. “He won’t open for you.”

The Doctor doesn’t reply, just inserts the key into the lock and turns. The door fails to open.

“Told you,” Rodan says as the Doctor kicks the door frame.

With a short sigh, the Doctor throws the key at her. “Open it.”

Rodan catches the key easily, going to unlock their TARDIS.  “He doesn’t like you.”

The Doctor doesn’t reply, but does lean towards the TARDIS. “What type?”

“Fifty-one,” Rodan says.

"Ah, he replies and rocks back on his heels. "The CIA commissioned that type, and then used them as transport for assassins. All of them either rebelled or went insane," he says blandly. "I may have helped."

Leela grins. “Then he dislikes the Time Lords as much as I do!”

"Yes, but it does make it a bit difficult for me to help," the Doctor says, frowning. "He won’t let me in."

Rodan makes a noise, the same one that she makes when Leela is being ignorant again. “Then hook me up to yours instead of the other way around.”

The Doctor grins brightly, turning toward her. “Of course! Come here.” Within seconds, he’s pulling a rondel off the wall, revealing a mass of wires. “Won’t hurt a bit.”

Leela snorts her laughter as Rodan walks towards him. “It will,” she says, smiling.

“Well yes,” the Doctor says, annoyed, and hands a wire to Rodan, “but you didn’t have to tell _her_ that.”

Rodan shakes her head, knuckles white on the wire. “I already knew, thank you Leela.”

“Go!” the Doctor shouts, and drops to the floor. After a moment, Leela imitates him. Rodan stays standing.

Seconds pass before Rodan moves again, dropping the wire and panting loudly. “It’s done.”

The Doctor stands, limbs flailing. “You’ll be able to fly him now. Or – enough, anyway.” There’s something almost like kindness in his face as he looks at Rodan. “Not like me, not as well as me, but – better.”

“Thank you,” Rodan says quietly.

The Doctor looks over her shoulder. “Go. Explore the universe. You’ll see –”

“Are you lonely?” Leela asks, cutting him off.

He turns to look at her, tugging on his collar. “No. I’m not.”

She is not disappointed. She is  _not_. It would be sad for him to be lonely, after he has done so much for her. But – has he truly forgotten about her so soon? To not miss her, to not care that she had left – she had mourned him, as one does a family member who left for a different tribe. Had he not done the same for her?

“Doctor?” The voice comes from the still–open door. “Did you get lost again?”

The Doctor flushes. She thinks for a moment, but she cannot remember the Doctor ever turning red before. “Ah – no, no, just – a small problem, almost dealt with.”

"Oh  _Doctor,”_ the speaker says. It sounds female. “I’m coming to help. “

He straightens, eyes bulging. “No!” It comes out as a squeak and Leela snorts. “No. I – almost dealt with. You – you just focus on finding the next segment.”

The silence is faintly suspicious. “Very well. Five minutes, Doctor.”

The Doctor tugs at his collar again. “She’s telling  _me_  what to do.  _Me_ – the cheek!” With a sigh, he looks at her. “Goodbye, Leela.”

“She is travelling with you,” Leela says, ignoring his comment.

He swipes at his hair again. “Yes. She is. I – not my idea. The Time Lords, you know how they get. Thought I needed  _assistance_.” He looks shocked at the idea.

Leela frowns. “Hmm,” she says, imitating him. “Are you happy, then?”

The Doctor stares at her for a moment, blue eyes wide. “Yes, Leela. I think I am.”

“Goodbye, Doctor,” she tells him, smiling slightly. “Best of hunting.”

Rodan laughs, shaking her head. “Another Gallifreyan, Doctor. I can feel her.” She smiles, moving towards Leela and grabbing her hand. “Goodbye. And thank you. Good luck with your new companion.”

The Doctor grins at them, toothily, and twirls off for the door.

~~~

Their TARDIS is perfect. He likes to disguise himself as a doorway, blocking off the end of alleyways or standing lonesome in fields. Inside he prefers curves to right angles, tans and oranges and a touch of blues in colour. He prefers K-9 to Rodan, and Leela to anything. Some days, when Rodan is frustrated and her hair standing on end, when she has been programming and reprogramming his coordinates for hours, always getting locked out by security systems that hadn’t existed a minute ago or by faulty memory banks who apparently cannot contain the coordinates, those days she is bitter about it, and snaps at Leela, and locks K-9 out of the console room.

Fortunately, those days are rare.

Most days it is Rodan who figures out where to go, and Leela who takes them there, with assistance from K-9. It isn’t terribly accurate: they’re frequently off by several years or a few miles. Occasionally they are right on target – more often, they have no clue where they are when they step out.

Leela always steps out first, frequently with her hand on her knife. She is closely followed by K-9, and then by Rodan, who is more hesitant and nervous than her partner.

Rodan is not, on her own, adventurous. She prefers to let others make the major decisions and then is content to decide whether or not to follow. She is strong, intelligent, and opinionated – but she is not adventurous, and left to her own devices, would be quite content to read her way through the TARDIS library, which contains a significant percentage of the Matrix.

She isn’t left to her own devices.

Leela is adventurous, and has no patience for anyone else’s opinions, most of the time. She simply expects that Rodan will follow, and will help, and will do her best to get them into and out of trouble, and that in all things Rodan will be her partner and her equal. From another person, this casual expectation would have left a sick feeling in her gut, and it has, when the Time Lords expected that she would always be there, always doing her job. From Leela it is the way the world works.

They have impossible expectations of each other: Leela expects that Rodan will be able to run, and to fight, and (on rare occasions) to kill. Rodan expects that Leela will know things, and be able to understand politics, and have the patience for discussion first. There are days when they hate each other for it. There are days when it saves their lives. Most days, though, it’s just normal, each expecting the other to be a reflection of themselves, and watching in amazement when they reach and surpass those demands.

They are absolutely, completely, head-over-heels in love with each other. This is variously surprising, terrifying, and the only sane point in a world always changing.

Because if there’s one thing Leela has taught Rodan (and there isn’t, she’s taught the Gallifreyan so much, so many impossible wonderful things, but if forced to pick one, it would be this), it is that they can change the world, they can make things better, and they can start with one small crying child and turn that child’s life around completely.

They aren’t fighting for planets, or civilizations, or governments.

They’re fighting for people.

And they love it.

 ~~~

The first planet, the first proper planet they land on (they’d already visited two space stations and an asteroid, but those weren’t quite the same), Rodan has a fight with Leela.

It isn’t their second fight, or their third, they are both too opinionated for that, but it starts with Leela stepping out of the TARDIS, taking one look at the natives surrounding them, and saying, “You must change.”

Rodan looks at Leela, looks at the natives, looks at her Patrex robes, and shakes her head. “Why?”

Leela blinks confusedly. “Your clothes are not suitable for this planet.”

“And?” Rodan says slowly, pulling at her sleeves so they cover her wrists.

Leela shifts from foot to foot, staring at the natives. “This planet has fine hunts, I can sense it.” She tugs at her skins. “Your robes – they will not work for hunts.”

Rodan is tired. She’d spent the previous sixteen hours trying to coax their TARDIS into landing somewhere,  _anywhere_  with firm ground and a breathable atmosphere. She’s not entirely sure why he’s sulking now, but he is, and it might have made more sense to take a break midway, but it was one of those problems that always seems just on the cusp of completion, and so she kept working, and working, and working, and now all she wants is a bed and her partner and four uninterrupted hours. “I won’t be hunting,” she snaps, and then for some reason keeps talking. “I thought that was  _your_  thing.”

Leela bristles – though honestly, it is only noticeable to Rodan, who has made a life out of reading Leela’s emotions. “I am trying to make you feel welcome,” she says, voice shaking, and it takes Rodan a moment to recognize the emotion there: it is neither exhaustion nor anger, but fear.

“What are you afraid of?” Rodan asks, stepping out of the TARDIS and closing the door behind her.

It is the wrong question. Leela’s face stills, and her eyes defiantly meet Rodan’s. “Nothing. A warrior is afraid of nothing.” With that, Leela turns her attention to the natives.

Rodan is hurt, and a little afraid herself, but does not know the words to lower Leela’s defences. She remains quiet as Leela negotiates their entry into this culture, trusting her partner to have a better idea of how these primitive species work. She remains quiet, keeping her robes carefully out of the dust, as they begin the trek to the natives’ camp. And she is still quiet as they are fed mostly cooked meat and wild vegetables and shown to their own hut.

“What is wrong with you?” Leela hisses when they are finally alone. She is angry, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

Rodan looks away. “This is not a fight we need to have.”

Leela makes an annoyed noise but does not move. “I think it is. Do my opinions no longer count?”

“Of  _course_  they count,” Rodan says, turning back. “Why wouldn’t they?”

Leela is silent for a moment. “You never listen,” she whispers, looking down, arms still crossed. “Not to me.”

“I do!” Rodan protests, frowning. She’s certain she has, at least once. But Leela never seems to want anything –

 _And she’s a primitive anyway_ , she thinks, as hard as she tries to stop,  _they don’t count_.

“When?” Leela bites out, glaring at her. Rodan stares at her, unable to form a response. “I see.”

Rodan clenches her teeth. Even after all this time with her partner, she is unused to having to communicate in words, rather than thoughts, and it takes effort to shape the phrases precisely. “What is wrong, Leela?”

Leela glances away, glowering at the floor. “You would do better to be in skins, like me.”

“I would not,” Rodan says, trying to catch her eyes again. “Leela – these robes are like your skins. They are  _important_  to me.”

There is a pause, and then Leela huffs. “You did not notice.”

Rodan blinks, slightly thrown by this. “I didn’t notice what?”

“I spent all of the meal,” Leela spits out, “ne- nego-  _talking_  with the shaman. He wanted to have you burnt, for wearing the invaders’ clothes.”

Rodan has to swallow, at that, and choke back the emotions she does not know how to show. “Oh.”

Leela is shaking now, and refusing to look at her. “The TARDIS showed me. The invaders here wear robes, like yours. You should have listened.”

“Why didn’t you  _tell_  me?” Rodan takes a half-step towards Leela. “I would have listened to you –”

Her head is down, her hands clench tightly on her upper arms. “Would you have?” Leela says quietly.

Rodan freezes. Because the answer is no, no she wouldn’t have, she would have ignored Leela’s words and continued on as normal. Her clothes are important to her, the last vestiges of a society she still is not sure she should have left.

Leela’s breath comes rapidly. “You want to go back.”

She doesn’t have an answer. Yes, she wants to go back, this is all new and strange and there is dirt everywhere and she doesn’t have the experiences needed to process it properly. No, she doesn’t, because Leela is here and she loves Leela more than she can express. It is a muddle in her head that she has no hope of sorting out. “Yes,” she says finally, quietly. “I do.”

Leela chokes silently, shoulders heaving. Then she spins, fist lashing out and striking the tent-post. “Why did you come at all?”

“I want to stay more,” Rodan says, hoping that she can fix this somehow.

There is a long, hearts-wrenching moment where Leela does not move. “Is this truth?”

Rodan takes a moment to just breathe, trying to control herself, trying not to  _hope_. “Yes. It is.”

Leela turns, eyes red, and brushes hair back from her face. “Show me.”

She does. Her hands touch Leela’s face and she whispers, “Contact.” Their minds brush, Rodan showing all of her messy, complicated, indescribable emotions. She wants to stay, she wants to go home, she is unsure where home is but Leela must be there, it is a contradiction in terms, a paradox that the Time Lords would be unsure how to unravel.

Leela tenses at the flow of information, and then reciprocates. She wants to stay with Rodan forever, but not as a pet, never as a pet, and she would not have Rodan limit herself. She does not know how to make Rodan happy, but she wants Rodan to be happy, and so she worries, worries that Rodan is not happy, that Rodan is hurting herself to make Leela happy, and the very idea of that comes out of Leela’s brain tinged with disgust and revulsion.

There is a moment when they stare at each other, minds still connected. “Are you happy?” Leela asks softly.

Rodan leans her forehead against Leela’s. “Yes.”

~~~

Things are simpler after that.

Occasionally Rodan tries new clothes. Sometimes they are related to where they land, more often they’re not. Once they wear each other’s clothes for a day. They accomplish nothing, but laugh a lot, and the experiment is marked as a success. After a while, Leela begins to experiment as well. Her choices are more limited and predictable than Rodan’s (military uniforms, camouflage gear, clothing from a hundred cultures that Rodan used to call “primitive” and now calls “different”), but the point is still made – they will never survive this if they cannot change.

Leela experiments with cooking, aided by their inquisitive TARDIS. Rodan tries once, and then is banned from the kitchen. Even she can’t explain how she managed to mix up pepper and gunpowder, but the resulting explosion destroyed the primary kitchen. Some days they eat wherever they’ve landed, and some days they eat Leela’s experiments, but most days they eat from the replicator, which at least is decent, if a bit limited.

They spend a fun day (or what their TARDIS calls a day, which may not be the same thing) redecorating him, looking through all the themes for his console room and playing about with their bedroom. The next day, they wake up and the hallways have turned neon; Leela laughs and returns most things to their original state. Their bedroom remains the same, however.

One day they land on Earth, at a place called a “dude ranch” and they both learn how to ride horses. The next, Rodan manages to circle them around a temporally-volatile rift and she teaches Leela how to capture and ride vortisaurs. To no one’s surprise, Leela is better than her at both of these, but this doesn’t stop Rodan from trying to keep up.

K-9 is always there too. During redecorating, he stays attached to the console, tail cranking happily as he communicates with the TARDIS hardware. At the “dude ranch”, he terrifies the other dogs, and utterly confuses the humans. The vortisaurs are bemused by him, and one attempts to attack him, which leaves the console room stinking of artron energy and scorched flesh. Often he goes on their adventures, sticking next to one of them, providing intelligence and occasional advice.

They are a team, and things are, if not simple, at least functional.


	4. They, 2

They get married.

It’s only partially accidental.

In Rodan’s defence, the TARDIS records didn’t say that this planet had laws against lone men. In Leela’s defence, today she does not look very much like a woman.

The guards want to know if they are wed. They share a brief, panicked look, and then Rodan says, “Yes.”

Fortunately, that is it – the guards apologize, release them, and they can carry on exploring a city that is built from fabrics. But that night, when they have returned to their TARDIS wreathed in flowers (it is the feast of one of their gods, and it is considered polite to wear his tokens), with K-9 by their side and a flower crown of his own, Leela frowns and brings the subject up again. “You told him we are married.”

“I did,” Rodan says, confused. She begins to fiddle with the control unit one more time in the vain hope that it might accomplish something.

“Rodan,” Leela says, in the tone of voice that means she is in no mood to be brushed off.

Blinking, Rodan turns away from the console. “Yes.”

Leela has her arms crossed and is giving her a steady, slightly bemused look. “You lied.”

“What did you want me to say?” Rodan asks, one hand tight on the console. She has already run into her partner’s peculiar idea of truth and has no wish to repeat the experience.

Leela hisses out a breath. “I am a woman. You could have told him that.”

Rodan clenches her teeth because she does not know what else to do. “Some planets have different roles for males and females,” she says slowly, painstakingly. This is a concept just as strange to her as it must be to Leela.

“Why?”

Rodan shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Leela frowns and scuffs a foot against the floor. “So – males alone are not allowed. But females together are not allowed either?”

“Not – not together like we are,” Rodan says quietly. “Some – species, I think, have an ingrained hatred for partners of the same gender – I really do not know.”

Her partner looks more confused than ever. “But  _why_?”

Rodan rubs the back of her neck. “I – Leela, I don’t  _know_. We don’t have –” she flails for a moment, sputtering, “have sexism on Gallifrey, it’s – I don’t understand it myself.”

“It is this thing where if we told the truth, we would be in trouble,” Leela says slowly.

Rodan considers correcting her, and then gives it all up as a bad job. “Yes.”

Leela looks at her hopefully. “Then it would be – sens-i-ble for us to get married.”

The words almost don’t make sense. “Leela – marriage is –”

“When two people love and care for each other very much, yes I know,” Leela rattles off. “So?”

Rodan immediately squashes the impulse to ask Leela  _why_  the Doctor had felt the need to explain this to her. “Not on Gallifrey.”

Leela blinks. “Oh.”

The console room is silent, except for the soft noises of a TARDIS in flight, and the quiet whirring of K-9 as he charges. Eventually Leela says, “What do your people have?”

There are words, but only in Gallifreyan and many of them contain telepathic concepts. She has to try regardless, because Leela doesn’t know Gallifreyan, and the telepathy is too complex for her mind. “We have marriages,” she starts, fumbling for an explanation. “But they are between important people. For politics.”

Leela wrinkles her nose. It is a very Leela action. “I dislike politics.”

“I know,” Rodan says with a hint of a smile. “And – they are for the purpose of politics. The – the whole point is allegiances.”

Leela stares at her, confused. “All-ege-in-ce? What is this?”

Rodan sighs. “Friendships. That will hold, even when you disagree.”

“And you need a  _marriage_  for this?”

It astounds Rodan on a regular basis that Leela has lived on Gallifrey for years and maintained her innocence. “Gallifreyans – Time Lords especially – find politics more important than other people.”

“Oh,” Leela says, disgusted.

Rodan holds back the rest of her immediate reactions. “Yes. So – I hope you understand – I do not wish to get married.”

Leela sighs. “Is there a thing that your people do when they are in love?”

Rodan blinks, astonished that it has taken her this long to understand what her partner is thinking. “Yes,” she says quietly, holding back a surge of excitement, “yes there is.”

Grinning, Leela nods. “Then will you do this thing with me?”

Rodan can do nothing but smile in return. “Yes. Of course.”

~~~

After that, the wedding itself is anticlimactic, although it has its own fair share of catastrophes.

It takes place on Earth, because that was the first humanoid planet they found, on a boat, in a place and time where the people do not care about genders.

The very first thing that goes wrong is that Leela takes offence at the officiant. She dislikes his outfit, his position, and his accent, and makes all of this clear from the beginning. Rodan sighs and tries to do damage control. Fortunately the officiant is understanding, and tells Rodan privately that “your fiancée isn’t the worst atheist I’ve seen”. She doesn’t bother to correct his assumptions and takes Leela aside for a brief word.

The second thing is that there is a minor alien invasion. Minor, meaning that there are no deaths; alien, meaning that the sentient gasbags are certainly not from Earth or from any planet Rodan has ever seen. They call themselves by a name even Rodan can’t pronounce, so Leela dubs them balloons. It fits, well enough, and after a tense period of negotiations, they agree to remain near the boat until someone is able to go fix their crashed ship.

The following three things happen in quick succession: the officiant tries to ask Leela what their vows will be, K-9 is seen by him, and the Doctor’s TARDIS surprises everyone by squashing a deck chair.

It’s the beige Doctor, and he’s accompanied by two females who are introduced as Tegan and Nyssa. He apologizes for missing the ceremony, for hitting the deck chair, and for bringing uninvited guests before noticing the shocked officiant and trying to introduce himself. Tegan and Nyssa follow him, standing a shade too near to each other for any but close friendship.

In the time it takes for the Doctor to sort things out with the officiant, Rodan manages to explain the concept of vows to Leela. Leela refuses to say anything about her tribe’s ceremonies, which would worry Rodan under normal circumstances. Now, however, she has the feeling of flinging herself off a cliff once more, into something new and exciting, and she cannot bring herself to care.

The ceremony only gets underway because Tegan pulls the Doctor into a chair, cutting off his investigation into the balloons. Somehow the officiant manages to act normally, despite the Doctor whispering under his breath at Nyssa.

And then it is time for their vows, and Rodan is abruptly more nervous than she has ever been.

“Leela of the Sevateem,” she says, taking care to speak in English. This is important, that she be able to say this both in her own language and the language of her partner. “I love you. I’m not entirely sure what that means,” Leela smiles at that, and it makes her relax, just slightly, “but whatever it means, I agree. With every ounce of both my hearts, I am yours. In my mind, you are perfect. Your –” she stutters slightly, because there is a concept in Gallifreyan, but no word in English – “Your soul is perfect. Your behaviours can grow and change, and your appearance, but your soul does not, and it is that that I love. I will stay beside you, in life and in death, in peace and in war, until the end of time and the beginning of the universe. Everything which I am, which I have been, and which I shall be is yours, to do with as you will.”

She shivers slightly, hands clenching on Leela’s. “I cannot promise to be perfect. You value truth, and so honest I shall be: I cannot be perfect. But I will strive to be so in your eyes until the end of days. I may lose my patience or my temper, grieve, mock, or scorn, but when the time is come, I shall think of your wishes before any other, and strive to improve myself. You are my everything, and I swear – I  _hope_  that my every action will reflect that.”

She nods at the officiant, who looks slightly stunned. “Ah – yes. Do you, Rodanvatriakos,” he barely stutters over her name, “take Leela of the Sevateem to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”

Rodan tries not to look as overwhelmed as she feels, standing in her ceremonial robes. “I do.”

The officiant looks at Leela. Leela drops her hands and takes a step backwards. Tegan gasps. Rodan frowns, confused.

“Rodanvatriakos,” Leela says smoothly, eyes glinting. “You use very many words.”

The Doctor laughs and then makes a choking sound, as if someone had kicked him.

“I am not so good at words,” she continues, eyes never leaving Rodan’s. “I can try, but words do strange things when they leave my mouth.”

Rodan swallows, and forces up a smile.

Leela smiles back. It looks real. “I cannot make promises. I kill, when you do not want me to kill. You call me ‘rash’ and ‘reckless’. These are things I cannot change. They are me. I will not try. But – I will listen.”

“I never asked for any more,” Rodan says, though she knows she should be quiet.

The Doctor makes another bizarre noise.

“Shush,” Leela tells her, smile gentle. “In my tribe, we say no words. We do something else. I know you cannot do it in return. I do not care. You have done more for me than I know words, and now I do something for you.” In a single, fluid motion, she unsheathes her knife and presents it to Rodan, hilt first. “Yours.”

Rodan is trembling again as she reaches out for the hilt. No one but Leela touches her knife, even Rodan. Her fingers close around the leather and brush against Leela’s. Impulsively, she shoves her emotions at her partner.

Leela grins and releases the knife, dropping her hands. “You may speak your words, shaman,” she says coldly, looking at the officiant.

Rodan despairs at covering any of this up, but Leela’s knife is in one hand, and she reaches out to clasp Leela’s hand with the other.

The officiant looks stunned, but moves on. “Do you, Leela of the Sevateem, take Rodanvatriakos to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”

“I do,” Leela says, and her voice  _sings_.

“Then you may now kiss,” the officiant says, but Rodan’s hand is already moving up Leela’s arm, up to the contact points on her head.

Leela raises her other arm and clasps her fingers around Rodan’s on the knife. “Contact,” she says, smiling.

“Contact,” Rodan replies, and their minds touch.

For a brief moment, they are lost in each other, minds swirling, one enveloping the other and merging, LeelaRodan RodanLeela, no beginning and no end, just a circle of love and affection and devotion.

Then they pull back jointly to hear the Doctor clapping enthusiastically, his companions slightly slower. He runs up before Tegan can grab onto him again, face bright red. “Ah – congrat– well, a very nice wedding at least. A bit – Rodan, a bit loud, but – congratulations to both of you!”

They turn to face him, still holding hands. “I did nothing,” Leela says, confused but smiling.

Rodan turns a nearly identical shade of red, realizing – she’d forgotten shielding. “Oh – I – Lord President, I’m –”

The Doctor shifts from foot to foot. “Yes, well, happens to the best of us ,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Don’t – It’s really fine, I just – you were a bit loud.”

“The best of us?” Rodan mouths quietly, putting two and two together and coming up with four.

Leela frowns, confused. “Loud? We weren’t loud.”

Out of the corner of Rodan’s eye, she can see Tegan looking similarly bewildered and Nyssa bright pink. “Your companion?” Rodan asks quietly.

The Doctor clears his throat. “She heard.”

“What are you talking about?” Leela says, louder than Rodan is really comfortable with.

Rodan fumbles with the knife, semi-accidentally. “Oh, take this back. I gift it to you.” She manages to not sound completely disapproving, but it is a near thing. Maybe if she changes the subject, they can all forget about this.

Giggling, Leela takes the knife and slides it back into its sheath. “Doctor. How are you?”

“ _Very_  good,” the Doctor says, grinning madly. “Lovely wedding. I – well, might have one of my own in a bit, we’ll see.”

“What?” Rodan squeaks, and it  _is_ a squeak, try as she might.

The Doctor flushes again. “Oh! No. No, no, no. Not me. No – ah. Them.” He jabs a finger at Tegan and Nyssa. “I meant them, I’m really – sorry.”

It takes Rodan a moment of staring, but she can see it, in the way Tegan looks at Nyssa for guidance, and Nyssa’s hand rests for just a moment against Tegan’s. “Do they know?” she says quietly.

The Doctor makes several motions with his hands that are probably supposed to be a Gallic shrug. “Not – really. They haven’t said anything. I think.”

Leela snorts. “They will.”

“Hmm,” the Doctor says, smiling. “And your TARDIS? Is he? Oh, and K-9!”

Rodan looks down. He is indeed bouncing, rocking forward and back from heel to toe. “Our TARDIS is fine. K-9 is happy.”

The Doctor finally sticks his hands in his pockets, still bouncing. “Oh! A gift.” He fumbles for a moment, and pulls out a white cube. “Because –” He tries to wave both hands, and Rodan snags the cube before he can drop it. “Thank you. Because you can’t make your own. One message, anywhere in space and time. And accurate. I think.”

“We get gifts?” Leela says.

Rodan smiles. “Yes. Doctor – we did not rent the boat for –”

He sobers slightly, catching her eye. “Another gift. Take care, Rodanvatriakos. Lungbarrow offers its blessing.”

“Take care, my Lord,” she says, just as formally. “Yewcroft accepts your blessing and all that entails.” Her House would  _kill_  her if they knew she was doing this, but she really could not care less. If she hasn’t yet been exiled officially, she’s still in de facto exile and has no plans to ever return to Gallifrey.

The Doctor grins back, all pretence at sobriety gone. “Go. Explore the universe. Get in danger. Call if you need me.”

Leela laughs, and drags Rodan back to their TARDIS. On the way, Rodan sees Tegan eyeing Nyssa with interest, and smiles.

“We’re married,” Leela says, excitedly.

Rodan couldn’t be bothered to correct her. “Yes.  _We_  are.”

Leela giggles, and they nearly fall into their TARDIS.


	5. They, 3

Revolutions are easy.

This is Leela’s opinion, delivered when they land on some planet whose rulers think it is amusing to bring back feudalism.

Rodan disagrees: revolutions are not easy, but they are at least predictable.

It takes effort for Rodan to extend her senses to include Leela, but at this point it’s habit. It isn’t precisely the same as being with another Gallifreyan, but it is far better than being alone, and it is an automatic response to the two of them being separated. So Rodan touches her mind to Leela’s the moment they step off the TARDIS, and from that point onwards, they are in constant contact.

Rodan goes to play nicely with the overlords, K-9 trailing after her. Leela goes to stir up resistance.

Throughout the long dinners, punctuated by what the overlords call entertainment, and Rodan refers to as torture, Rodan keeps her sanity by communicating with Leela. Leela, for her part, has dinners with the peasants and the enslaved. Rodan almost wishes she could be there, if for no other reason than to watch Leela rejoice in being in her element, surrounded by people who care more for function than form.

The nights are the worst. They are so used to spending hours curled around each other, Leela sleeping, Rodan watching her before dozing off herself, that it is jarring to try to sleep apart. Rodan tosses and turns in the plush four–poster, and finally shoves the blankets into a roll and curls around it. Leela doesn’t sleep at all, not really – the peasants are given small houses and smaller beds, and sleep in piles for warmth. Instead, she sits outside a revolutionary’s cottage and sends images to Rodan, only sleeping for a few hours just before dawn, still propped upright by the wattle-and-daub wall. K-9, for his part, grumbles in the corner and makes snarky comments about Rodan’s lack of sleep.

When it is time, Leela knows the paths to get the revolutionaries into the manor, and Rodan unlocks the door. Her hosts trust her, though they shouldn’t have – earlier that night, Rodan slipped knockout pills into the food, and then didn’t eat. The revolutionaries want to kill the overlords – Leela refuses, and has the backing to do so. Instead, Rodan introduces the concept of war crimes and impartial juries, while Leela shows them how to turn an army into a government.

It isn’t perfect, but it never is.

One of the revolutionaries slits an overlord’s throat before they can stop her. Leela, to all appearances, comes within a heartbeat of killing her before Rodan stops the knife and reaffirms the idea of  _impartial_  juries. The revolutionary will be tried just as the overlords are, although her punishment will likely be lesser.

They don’t say for the trials. The revolution is spreading planetwide, but because they started it, because their ideals are at the core, the violence is lesser than it could be, than it would be under someone else’s hand.

Some days Rodan’s conscience troubles her: they are interfering, playing at gods, changing the shape of history, pretending that they know more than the natives. Those days Leela holds her, and tells her what she doesn’t want to hear. They  _are_  playing at gods, but they are doing it with the best of intentions, and their revolutions, surely, change history for the better. Rodan doubts, but her doubts run up against Leela’s unshakable faith, ships smashed to fragments on rocks formed from the absolute certainty that life is all.

And then they leave, and today they are sad, because there were unnecessary deaths, but they are touching, always touching, fingers wound around each other, walking so close together their legs brush and not bothering to change that because touching is what centres them, keeps them whole and together, keeps them from forgetting why they came and why they are leaving.

They always leave.

They never come back again.

In that way, Leela thinks, they are like the Doctor.

~~~

They meet him, occasionally, always in the strangest of circumstances.

At first, it is Leela’s Doctor, wild brown hair, long legs, too many teeth, a scarf. He is pleased to see them, particularly together, but takes care to never let them meet his companion. Rodan explains, after the first such encounter, that his current travelling partner is a Time Lady, with ideas about who should and should not have access to a TARDIS. Leela doesn’t complain, after that.

Later, it is a different Doctor, wearing beige, with floppy hair and more companions than he seems to know what to do with. He comes to their wedding, after first apologizing for missing it. Rodan mocks him for messing up the timelines so badly. Leela is just pleased that he came.

Then it is a Doctor who seems to be taking full advantage of the exceptions in the sumptuary laws for renegades. His clothing makes Rodan’s eyes hurt. Leela is unsure that she approves either, but this Doctor uses too many long words for her to argue.

Once, they meet an earlier one accidentally, with white hair and ruffled shirts. He is upset at them, though he pretends not to be, and once Rodan figures out that he is trapped on Earth, she is much more sympathetic. He glowers at Rodan and smiles at Leela, and they stop an invasion together, along with his assistants, and finally he asks Rodan to lock the memories away, because he cannot know this yet. They can both see it hurts him, because also locked away in his head is the knowledge of how to fly a TARDIS, knowledge that he gave to Rodan and she cannot return. They avoid those decades on Earth after that.

The next one they see is short, with a hat that he likes to wave about, and an umbrella that he waves even more than the hat. He and Rodan edge around each other, but it takes Leela a moment to figure out why: he is too Time Lord for Rodan’s comfort, too certain in his accuracy for her to believe him. Leela likes him because he smiles and does not talk down to her, but she hates him, just a little, for that.

And finally, he has long brown hair and clothing that Rodan eyes quietly, soft speech and a habit of jumping from topic to topic. They both like this version, and he likes them. It is the first time they have seen him when he is lonely. He mentions a human girl, who did not wish to come, and otherwise is silent about his past.

Mostly they run, however, when he is there, they run and run and run, and talk and laugh and fight and save worlds and nothing has changed. It all feels slightly off, for both of them, because they are not used to three, but they are helping on a larger scale than ever when he is there, and that, at least, is something.

Their adventures with the Doctor are odder than anything else, and they would not give them up for the world.

~~~

Rodan’s first regeneration is a surprise.

This planet has guards, and these guards have guns. These are normal, but things go wrong.

Leela is in the lead, on the dash back to their TARDIS. Rodan is two steps behind.

Behind her, Leela hears a scream and a thud, and she turns, breaths harsh. Rodan is on the ground, blood pouring from her side. The guard looks shocked and the others are yelling at him.

It does not matter.

She grabs Rodan, trying not to hurt her more than necessary. Fortunately, she is strong, and Rodan is light, and she can carry Rodan to the TARDIS doors. They swing open on their own. She leaves Rodan on her side, on the floor, leaves K-9 watching over her, and leaves the TARDIS.

A quarter hour later, she is back, blood not her own on her skins and knife. Rodan is still alive, gasping on the floor, hands clenched tightly on the wound. “Leela,” she says, words barely more than a whine.

“Rodan.” Leela’s knees hit the floor and her knife falls from her hands. “You are hurt.” The words shatter across her mind. She does not understand it. Rodan does not get hurt, not once, not ever. And now her blood is pooling on the floor and her guts oozing onto her hands, and Leela does not know what to do.

Rodan smiles but it looks more like a grimace. “I am.” Her face is white but her hands are red, covered in blood and other things Leela does not want to think about. “I think I will regenerate,” she says very quietly.

“No,” Leela tells her, hands on her shoulders. The rest of the world has vanished and the only thing that matters is Rodan, here inside their TARDIS, bleeding. “No, no, no, no you will not, I will not let you!”

Her wife laughs, wincing. “Large calibre bullets, Leela. All sorts of damage inside.” Her words are short and jerky, bitten out when she can get past the pain. “Don’t touch –” The sentence is cut short.

Leela frowns, and then Rodan’s mind is in hers, and both of them are screaming. The pain is like nothing else she has ever known, and the shock is almost worse. Leela scrambles backwards, releasing her. “How can I help?” she asks, frightened more than she ever has been.

“Box,” Rodan gasps. “The message box.” She curls in on herself, blood spurting, and cries out shortly. “I need a Time Lord.” She is snivelling, tears coming from her eyes, and Leela would rather be anywhere but here and now.

But now she has a mission. She touches Rodan gently, through her skins, and then moves to where they put the box. They keep it under the console, in a small container. When she takes it out it feels faintly warm. “Now what?”

Rodan shakes, turning onto her back and panting. “Bring – it – no. No. I taught – you. I taught you. Concentrate. Top – open. Think. I – need a Time Lord. A _Time Lord_. Specific.”

Leela nods. Sitting down, she puts the box in front of her and thinks. Rodan is not a great teacher, and she is not a great student, but she has learned something. After a moment, the top of the box opens. She looks at Rodan, who makes a painful smile. Taking a deep breath, Leela concentrates.

_Rodan dying. Needs help. A Time Lord. Please._

The box closes again. “Now what?” Leela says, shivering.

“Door.” The rest of the sounds from Rodan’s mouth are neither human nor Gallifreyan. They sound like nothing Leela has heard before or wants to hear again.

Her legs are shaking. She stumbles to the doors and manages to wrench one open. The box is dropped into the Void. Leela lets the door slam shut before running back to Rodan. “Will they be here in time?”

Rodan cannot speak, just shakes her head. One of her hands clenches onto Leela’s skins. The other is still pressed to her side.

Time passes. She is unsure how much. When someone knocks on the door, Rodan is reduced to quiet breaths. Leela jerks, and pulls Rodan’s hand free.

The man on the other side of the door is tall, well-groomed, and wearing a human-type suit. His eyes flick from Rodan to Leela and back again, resting on her wife’s bloody form. “Ah, of course. That explains the somewhat garbled nature of the message.”

Leela has no time for his words. The longer this takes, the closer Rodan comes to something she cannot bring herself to name. “Help her!” she shouts, as if saying the words louder will make him more likely to listen.

The man strides past her and kneels by Rodan, avoiding the puddle of blood that surrounds her. He does not touch her but simply looks. Leela wants to scream at him to hurry, barely holding herself together. Rodan asked for a Time Lord, and she must have had a reason. Surely.

“Hmm,” he says, after an age. “Your first time, I take it.”

Rodan does not respond but manages to open her eyes and glare at him. It is a reaction that would make Leela smile, under other circumstances.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He leans over Rodan and touches two fingers to her head. Their eyes meet. “Of course, you understand the delicate situation here? What you are asking me to do goes far beyond petty illegalities. It is quite a large request to make of someone you’ve not so much as met before.”

Leela snarls at him for wasting time.

Rodan shoves herself over on one side, knocking his hand away. Light sparkles from her hands. “Transduction barrier. I know the codes.”

“An acceptable trade.” He returns his fingers to her forehead. “Contact. You may begin whenever you’re ready.”

Rodan cries out wordlessly and the TARDIS groans around them. The man frowns, fingertips pressed to Rodan’s skull. “I am here to help. Go ahead and start it.”

For one horrible moment, Rodan does not move. Then she jerks once and falls completely limp, not even breathing. Slowly, her face twists and changes. If she did not know of regeneration, Leela would be terrified. As it is, she is nervous. How much of Rodan will be left, at the end? More worryingly, it stops midway, her face human and yet not, leaving Leela without words.

The man’s frown deepens. “Focus on what you want, the rest will flow from there.”

Rodan makes a quiet noise, one almost-arm reaching for Leela.

“Of course,” the man says, a smile flicking at his lips. “A trifle impractical, I should think. Not just what you want, then. Your future appearance. The timelines must be stabilized.”

Rodan makes another noise, louder, and then tenses. Her face flows, oddly, changing and then solidifying and then changing again. When it is done, Rodan has not moved, yet she seems taller, darker, older almost, in a way that makes no sense to Leela’s mind.

“Good,” the man tells her, sounding approving. “Can you stand?”

Rodan doesn’t appear to be able to open her eyes. She moans again.

“I suppose not. If you keep your arms in –” He picks her up carefully, avoiding skin contact.

Leela snarls again. “What are you doing?”

“Helping,” he says mildly. It makes her bristle, the way he treats her like a child. But he is here to help Rodan, not her, and Leela swallows her protests. “Where is your medical bay?”

“Tell me what you are doing first,” Leela tells him, wishing her knife was back in its sheath. As it is, the blade is too far away if the Time Lord is dangerous.

His grey eyes stare at her. Most everything about him is grey, except for his hair, but not a boring grey. It is more like the grey of a knife. “We have very limited time, I’m afraid. Based on your entryway, I’d say this is a Type 51. Second corridor, then, and third door on the left.” He turns and strides off.

“Why did you ask?” Leela bursts out. Stopping only to scoop up her knife, she runs after him. “If you knew –”

He pauses only briefly, glancing at her as he turns a corner. “You could very well have rearranged your TARDIS. I thought it best to check.” The door to the med bay swings open in front of him and he finds a bed quickly.

Leela hovers as he lays Rodan on the bed. “What is wrong with her?”

He ignores her again, picking up a syringe. Making a face, he jabs it into his own arm.

“What are you doing?” Leela demands, stepping closer to him.

Filling the syringe with his own blood, he spares her a glance. “A small amount of my blood will keep her alive until I can connect her with her TARDIS.”

“Our TARDIS,” Leela corrects. She does not understand why their TARDIS is helping the man anyway, but as annoying as he is, she wants him there. Rodan is more important.

The man smiles very slightly. With one hand, he shoves Rodan’s sleeve up, still not touching her, and puts the syringe in the crook of her elbow with the other. “I have particles in my blood that keep me alive. This is not a permanent solution, you understand – just a temporary one,” he tells her, and presses down on the syringe.

Leela watches him carefully.

Pulling the syringe out, he sets it back on the table. Rodan takes a long breath. “Good,” the man says, watching her closely. “Regenerations only work because a Gallifreyan can heal themselves. Doing so, however, causes a chain of paradoxes. Unless something is inserted to stabilize those paradoxes, they will simply die again.” He pauses.

Leela moves to the other side of the bed, and puts her hand on Rodan’s shoulder. “You inserted this – thing?”

“Not as yet,” the man says, crossing the room to a shelf of cabinets. Opening one, he begins to shuffle through it. “Time Lords have a, well, essentially a miniature paradox machine inserted into every cell in their bodies upon graduation from the Academy. For the lower castes –”

“Rodan is not lesser!” Leela shouts, hands clenching.

The man raises both eyebrows. “It’s the common terminology. For the lesser castes, the situation is somewhat different. Ah.” He holds up a small computer. “They must remain within range of the Eye of Harmony, or –” the computer is waggled slightly – “be connected with a TARDIS. Which is what I am attempting to do.”

Leela huffs, and watches him.

The computer gets waved over Rodan’s body and then the man pokes at the screen. This is apparently something that takes a while. Rodan does not move.

Finally the man sets the computer on Rodan’s chest and moves off again. This time he returns with two syringes, both filled with a sparkling golden fluid. “Come here, please.”

Leela approaches him slowly. “Why?”

“Take this. Inject it into her right heart at the same time that I inject this one into her left heart. Do you understand?” The man hands her one syringe.

She takes it, eyes fixed on him.

He sighs. “Trust me. This fluid is calibrated with Rodan. Once we get it into her hearts, I can connect her to an IV drip, and replace her current blood with fluid produced by your TARDIS. Ready?” He swipes one hand down Rodan’s chest, and the smart-fabric parts.

After a moment, Leela nods.

“Now!”

They move together, his eyes watching her. She hesitates to insert the syringe but it is for Rodan. There is a dot of blood and then she shoves, the fluid leaving the syringe. Rodan gasps and shudders. Her back rises off the bed.

The man twists and grabs tubing from a rack. He inserts the needle on one end into Rodan’s arm.

“That is – the fluid? That she needs?” Leela asks slowly.

“Yes.”

Rodan cries out and nearly tears the tubing from her arm, thrashing on the bed.

The man moves, pinning her by her shoulders. “Easy, Technician. Believe it or not, I am trying to save you.”

Leela makes it back to the bed, breath hissing loudly. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing,” the man says shortly, lips tight. “This is normal.” He releases one of Rodan’s shoulders and moves that hand up to her forehead. “Time to wake up, Rodan.”

Rodan’s eyes snap open. “Time Lord,” she says, sounding frightened. Her hands scrabble at his.

He releases her and steps back. “Not the normal greeting, but it will do. A rough regeneration, Rodan.”

“Isn’t the first one always?” Rodan snaps, shoving herself upright.

“Usually,” the man says, smiling, “I know of a few that have gone well though.”

Rodan looks at him and frowns. “You want payment, I guess.”

“The codes would be nice, yes.”

“One more thing, Lord,” Rodan says, her voice tight.

The man raises one eyebrow. “Still for the codes?”

Rodan nods. “Yes. Leela. My wife.” Her eyes flicker from the man to Leela.

“What?” Leela says, looking between the two.

The man frowns at Rodan. “Your alien. As illegal as the rest of this is – I at least _attempt_  to remain within the laws, Technician.”

Rodan raises her chin. “And here you are.”

“Fair,” the man says, smiling. “The codes to the transduction barrier for your life, and that of your alien’s. And then we will be even.”

Rodan gives him a tight smile. “Yes.”

The man pulls back, looking smug. “Leela, come here.”

“Why?” Leela demands.

The man’s eyes meet hers, and he almost looks sad. “How long will you live, Leela? Fifty years? Seventy? A hundred, with the technology of this ship? If Rodan takes care, this body could last her five times that. And she has another eleven to go.”

“I will not leave her,” Leela says stubbornly, though the truth tears at her. She knows she will die centuries before Rodan does, that is a fact she has accepted.

Rodan sighs. “Leela – we know. He is trying to help. Odd as it might seem.”

The man’s mouth twists into something that might be a smile. “I have technology that can halt your aging cycles.”

“Why?” Leela asks, hand clenching on her knife. “I am not good with money but if you take payment for one favour, why take the same payment for two favours?”

“Leela –” Rodan says.

“Out of the goodness of my hearts,” the man interrupts dryly.

Leela snorts, eyes fixed on him.

He smirks. “Out of the knowledge, then, of your value to the timelines.” He crosses the room and pulls out another syringe. “Immortality, of a sort. At my fingertips.”

“With Rodan,” Leela says, meeting his eyes.

The man raises an eyebrow. “Yes.”

Leela reaches her hand out. “I will do it.”

He hesitates. “I would not recommend getting beyond fifty thousand miles from your TARDIS, however.”

“Fine,” Leela says.

He still is not moving. His eyes sweep her, calculating, and then he sighs. “Goodness of my hearts indeed,” he says quietly, in a way that makes Leela think she was not supposed to hear it.

“Getting soft in your old age,” Rodan says, smirking.

Leela takes the syringe. “What do I do with this?”

“Into a vein,” Rodan tells her quietly.

Leela grits her teeth, and inserts the needle-point into her arm. The fluid prickles as it flows into her veins, and for a second the world whites out. When she can see again, the man is carefully returning the computer to a cabinet.

“The codes, please,” the man says, turning back to Rodan.

Leela’s legs wobble and she has to grab onto another bed.

Looking exhausted, Rodan raises a hand. “In here,” she says, waving at her head.

“Clever,” he says calmly. “I am shielding.”

“Good.” Rodan reaches out with one hand and grabs onto his. Their eyes lock for a long moment before the man drops her hand. “Happy?” Rodan asks.

The man closes his eyes. “Yes. That is all of it?”

“In and out, with and without followers, there should even be the Presidential codes in there. All of it.” She looks faintly sick.

The man nods, smiling. “Good. Give my brother my wishes.” With that, he spins and leaves the medical bay.

Rodan sighs, and collapses back on the bed. “Omega willing, we’ll never see him again.”

Leela frowns, moving Rodan’s legs slightly so she can fit too. “Why?”

“There are very few Time Lords who it would have been worse to call,” Rodan says. “We got very lucky in that he was in a good mood, and that I had something he wanted. Next time we may not come off so well.”

Leela grumbles quietly. “I did what you said –”

Rodan shakes her head. “I wasn’t blaming you. Like I said, we got lucky. He had the knowledge and ability to help, and for some reason was willing to.”

“Oh,” Leela says. “Will he –”

“No. That’s not his style.” Rodan reaches out and grabs Leela’s hand.

Leela makes an annoyed noise. “Who is his brother?”

Rodan looks at her, surprised. “That’s right – you never did like the gossip. That was Irving Braxiatel. The Doctor’s brother.”

“Oh,” Leela says, blinking. “The Doctor has a sibling?”

Rodan laughs. “Of a sort.”

Leela wrinkles her nose. “Looms again.”

Rodan laughs again. It sounds different from before, but similar. “Yes. Leela –”

“Stupid Time Lady,” Leela says, curling up next to her. “Of course I still love you.”

Rodan moves slightly and puts her arm around Leela. “That’s good. I –”

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brax is somewhere in between The Empire of Glass and the beginning of Gallifrey. Rodan’s face-cast is Tehmina Sunny.


	6. They, 4

Fortunately the first regeneration is the worst.

It takes a while for them to settle down again. Rodan tiptoes around her for a day, but then Leela runs out of patience. Tackling Rodan, Leela tickles her until they’re both laughing, at ease with each other and themselves once again.

The change is initially rough. Rodan’s body is much less controlled now and for nearly a month she has a bruise on every limb. Her voice is louder and harsher; she chooses different words and there’s a period when she insults Leela on a regular basis.

Then Leela begins to insult back, then Rodan learns to control her limbs, then K-9 is reprogrammed to recognize Rodan’s voice as he does Leela’s. They learn the new ways they fit together and adjust. It isn’t the same as before, but it’s just as good, and that’s what counts.

~~~

They continue on precisely as before, only Rodan now has more interest in fighting and less in constantly reprogramming their TARDIS.

This means, according to the laws that their lives seem to follow, that a few years after Rodan’s regeneration their TARDIS breaks down on an abandoned planet.

Well,  _breaks_  –

Well,  _abandoned_  –

Either way, two spans after their crash landing on some unmarked planet, their TARDIS is smoking from his doors, and they have been captured and tied up by the Cybermen, who certainly aren’t supposed to be here and now.

(Leela has pointed out a few times that this regeneration is more acerbic and sarcastic than the last. Acerbic wasn’t the word she used, but Rodan finds it the most accurate.)

On the alternate path, they are at least tied up  _together_ , which means that if Rodan moves just a bit, her neck can brush Leela’s, and their minds merge.

Leela relaxes behind her, mind gentling. Rodan smiles back. “I think,” Leela says slowly, despite the fact that her words echo through Rodan’s mind a heartsbeat before she says them. “That it is a very good thing I do not age.”

Rodan chuckles, testing her bonds. “Why?”

“Because I do not want to leave you, doing this alone.”

Rodan shows Leela her emotions, her overwhelming feelings of pleasure and contentment and _love_ , oddly enough. “Why tell me now?”

Leela wriggles, and pulls away, the last touch of her mind filled with pride and glee. “Because you cannot untie knots. And I can.”

Laughing, Rodan stretches as her hands are untied. “So. Cybermen.”

“I have no more gold dust,” Leela says, sounding sad.

Rodan nudges her gently, standing up. “I programmed computers for a living. Cybermen –” She snaps her fingers, a human expression. This body cares less about the differences between human and Gallifreyan than the last.

Leela grins. “Good.” Her hand reaches out; Rodan takes it instantly. “Their leader went this way.”

“Wonderful,” Rodan tells her as they walk in lock-step down the corridor. “Should be easy.”

~~~

It is easy, astonishingly enough. The Cybermen weren’t prepared for a Gallifreyan and a human who know precisely how to work to their own strengths and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Cybermen’s weaknesses. Rodan disables the Cyber-systems easily while Leela provides cover, having stolen a Cyberman’s gun. And then –

“ _Omega_ ,” Rodan says softly, staring at the repurposed screen as if it would change the data. “And us with no TARDIS.”

Leela peers over her. “Numbers.”

Rodan considers thumping the screen, but decides that the jury-rigged system is unstable enough. “Binary. Stupid system, septenary is much more flexible.”

“What is wrong?” Leela asks, voice tight.

Rodan huffs quietly and  _does_  thump the screen. The numbers flicker and then stabilize, remaining essentially the same. “The Cybermen were after technology that would make them immune to gold dust,” she says, beginning the manual coding, trying to find a map,  _any_  map, “so they brought down a merchant ship. A  _Gallifreyan_  merchant ship. And those Gallifreyans are imprisoned here, in this complex.” Her stomachs threaten to revolt; she turns off her digestive system because this  _is not helping_. “Some of them are partially converted already.”

Leela doesn’t move for a second. “We have to get them out.”

“Dear,” Rodan says slowly, because she has the statistics up alongside a map and the results are nothing she wants to know. “Not all of them can leave.”

Her wife shifts her weight, adjusting the gun slung across her chest. “We can try,” she says stubbornly.  
“We always can  _try_.”

Rodan stands, the map memorized. “Yeah. We can.” It’s a lie that she knows as she says it. Many of the merchants have had too much replaced with metal to even be within a  _hope_  of redemption, but if Leela wants to try, then they will try.

~~~

They try.

Of the forty-nine merchants, a full twenty are so converted they have lost any sense of self. Leela shoots them immediately. Only nine are completely unconverted; the rest are somewhere in between and Rodan stares at them sadly. She has read the stories of the Cybermen and knows what will happen. In the end, it is a choice between killing them and sealing them off and hoping that no one lets them out. She knows which one the Doctor would choose but she is not a Time Lord and has none of his skills or his eternal logic-be-damned hope.

She takes Leela’s gun and sends her out of the room with the nine they can save.

When it is over, she takes on the gruesome task of incinerating the bodies. It is the only way to be certain that the Cyber-tech cannot come back, but when she is done, the scent of a charnel house sticks to her.

Leela gives her a sad look, taking the gun back. “There should have been another way.”

“Yes,” Rodan says simply, and goes to comfort the merchants.

~~~

The merchants are on an experimental mission, it turns out, to try to expand the trading arm of the Time Lords to even more planets. This works in Rodan and Leela’s favour: such merchants are more broad-minded than most of their caste, and less likely to turn away a renegade who isn’t even a Time Lord. The merchants are traumatized, obviously, and their collective mind reeks of fear and terror. It takes everything Rodan has to resist it and project calm. She comes worryingly close to being overwhelmed before Leela grabs her hand and provides another source of strength.

The merchants’ ship is destroyed, but they know more about mechanics than Rodan does and come up with parts for their TARDIS from remnants of the Cyber-base. Which then only raises the question of what to  _do_  with them?

Nine merchants without transport or goods – there’s nothing for it but to take them back to Gallifrey, except that Rodan would be just as happy to never go back to Gallifrey. Leela helps her get them into the TARDIS and then gives her a hand with piloting him, but they’re all emotionally exhausted. Finally Rodan designates bedrooms and packs them off before curling up with Leela on the couch in their sitting room.

She wakes up to find three hovering merchants. Muttering threats at anyone who might disturb Leela (her wife is never cuter than when asleep, limbs splayed and head thrown back) she shoos them all out into the console room, where she finds the other six very carefully not touching the console.

 _Merchants_.

The TARDIS has the same opinion – he is bemusedly interested, and wants to know her plan. “Where were you off to?”

The list of planets means nothing to her, but she doesn’t expect it to. What’s important is that they are finally beginning to think of a next, of a later. Their collective mind is still a shambles and it still presses painfully against her own. She’s fortunate, now, because the TARDIS supports her, his presence solid in her mind.

“If we dropped you off at one of those, could you contact another temporal power for help?” She has absolutely no interest in keeping them on board any longer than she has to, and they rub her all the wrong ways: subservient, self-serving,  _short-lived_.

The answer, fortunately, is yes. Rodan isn’t sure what she would do if it was otherwise. She is vaguely shocked at how insular she still is, just insular in other ways. She cares little for the differences between her and Leela, between Leela and other humans, but these differences between her and other Gallifreyans stick out like a rift in time. Even if she wanted to return, she can’t. There is nothing for her on Gallifrey now, no way for her to fit back into the fold that is, that  _was_  home.

She sets their course to the most advanced planet on the list, and then sends the merchants back to their bedrooms. There is nothing they can do to help, not on a TARDIS, and Rodan would just as rather they weren’t in the console room anyway.

They land more or less in the right location (correct planet, five hundred years off), and their TARDIS seems just as eager as she is to get them off as quickly as possible.

Leela is up to see them off, brushing hair out of her face. “Will they be safe? On this planet, will they be safe?” she says blurrily, scratching K-9 behind the ears.

“Safe enough, dear,” Rodan tells her casually, flipping the switch to shut the doors. “They’re within range of Gallifrey, so a ship should be out shortly.”

Leela comes up behind her, pressing against her back. “No more Cybermen.”

Rodan leans her head back, resting it on Leela’s shoulder. “Agreed.”

~~~

Their TARDIS breaks and they repair him; K-9 breaks and they repair him; Rodan regenerates once, twice, nine times over; Leela is the only one kept safe, because she is the only one who cannot come back.

Centuries pass.

They run, save worlds and topple empires, see the Doctor and occasionally other renegades, kill hundreds and rescue far more, and love each other more than anything else in the universe.

Occasionally Rodan checks their ages, more out of curiosity than anything else. In the beginning it worried her, how much younger Leela was, but now – there are still over a hundred years between them, but when both are approaching two millennia, this is a minor detail.

Some days Rodan finds it astonishing how intensely she loves Leela. She is Gallifreyan, a member of a species not known for intense emotions, yet Leela is her all.

The years roll by, ticked off by their TARDIS in sync with Gallifrey’s.

The Doctor is arrested, and for a moment Rodan considers returning to Gallifrey. Leela agrees, but K-9 reminds them both that one Technician and one human can hardly hold off the full weight of the Time Lords. In the end, the Doctor gets himself out.

A new President is elected, one whose name Rodan knows, Romanadrovratrelundar, but is kidnapped by Daleks almost immediately. They offer their assistance to the Doctor, who has already solved the problem by the time they manage to track him down.

More years pass, and pass they do, leaving them unchanged, unaltering. They are carving out a name for themselves: the Ladies, who fight oppression and injustice and who, after teaching the meaning to themselves, decided they would fight sexism too. There is a sector of a galaxy who worshiped them as goddesses, before Rodan turned Leela loose and let her show their priests what a goddess was. (The sector still worships them, only the priests are now priestesses who wear manufactured leather and sharp knifes.) There are many planets that fear them. There are more whose rulers fear and whose oppressed worship, lying in wait for the day that the sky will send down a lone-standing door and two women who listen to no words of restraint.

Some days Rodan worries that they live a charmed life, that this cannot continue forever. Then they watch another die, and she remembers the cost, the room in their TARDIS filled with names, with the records of all those they have failed. So she suppresses the worries, forgets that they existed, and moves on to the next adventure.

One day, reality will catch up.


	7. Leela

It ends on a planet whose name Leela never bothered to learn.

This one has somehow managed to discover space travel without inventing equality, which makes things slightly more complicated than normal but not much. They lead the revolution, but at the end there are still hide-outs, clusters of overlords clinging onto their position, and one of them has control of the launch pad – the one with two shuttles.

So they stay, and it is not until later that Leela thinks of how if they had left, if they had not stayed, they would still be they.

The capture of the launching pad is smooth, but they are cut off from their revolutionaries at the end, stuck in a room with an overlord, and he is the only person with a stunner.

He shoots Leela first.

~~~

She wakes up abruptly and runs to the bathroom. Stunners leave her sick, emptying her stomach into the toilet bowl. When she can think, K-9 is standing in the door. “There is a transmission for you, Mistress.”

It is her first clue that something is wrong. She is Mistress Leela, Rodan is Mistress Rodan. Always. Shivering, from the stunner and from fear, she follows K-9 to the console room. He connects himself to a scanner and she stands there, shifting from foot to foot.

The screen flickers on.

It shows a room from a security camera. The walls and floor are white. One wall has a window in it that shows space. There are two bodies on the floor. One is hers, the other, Rodan.

After a minute of nothing, Rodan stirs and sits up, running a hand through close-cut hair. “Leela? Dearest?”

Leela-on-the-screen does not move.

Rodan’s worry shows on her face. She touches Leela’s cheek briefly, and then sits back on her heels. “Okay,” she says quietly. Standing, she moves to the camera.

The screen flashes black for a second.

When it comes back, Rodan is standing in front of the camera. “Leela. I – I have to make the choice, and I think I’m making the right one. Don’t – I’ve rerouted the camera to send its data directly to the TARDIS. I only wish –” She looks away. “The Cersoids have hardwired this shuttle. It’s headed straight for their star. Fortunately – I think – we don’t have to worry about that.”

“I think we do!” Leela bursts out, forgetting for a moment that Rodan cannot hear her.

Rodan chuckles. “I’m bending the rules – breaking them, but whatever. I’m staring at your timeline, Leela. We can’t talk, not really, but – no. We don’t have to worry. Remember my first regeneration?”

Leela nods, a worried feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“I only survived because Braxiatel connected my body with our TARDIS. And you have only lived this long because he did the same with you.” Rodan pulls back slightly, and her gaze flickers to Leela-on-the-screen. “But remember – if we get too far away –”

“No!” Leela yells, jerking toward the scanner.

Rodan smiles sadly. “I’m sorry.” She sighs. “This shuttle has an emergency escape pod. One. It must have been an oversight on their part. We won’t both fit.”

Leela crosses her arms and curls her hands into fists. “You sent me away.”

Rodan bites her lower lip. “Leela, I – can’t. Yes, I’m sending you away. I have to save you, because I don’t know how to be alone. You do. I am being more selfish than I have ever been, Leela, dear. I cannot go on without you, and that is precisely what I am asking you to do: go on.”

Leela’s breath halts.

“If you aren’t yelling at me for wasting time, you should be.” Rodan’s smile wavers. “I – I will come back. Just wait. Please” She turns away from the camera and picks up Leela-on-the-screen’s limp body. They disappear off screen for several minutes.

Leela stands in their TARDIS and wonders if it is acceptable to cry now.

Eventually Rodan comes back and sits in front of the camera. “So there you go. Escape pod locked onto the nearest large mass. Actually onto the city nearest to our TARDIS. Left a note with you too – I know how you take to stunners, so wanted to get you into the TARDIS before you woke up. The revolutionaries owe us a favour.”

Leela glares at the screen and remains silent.

“You’re not happy with me,” Rodan says. “I – I don’t think I’m happy with me either. But – you won’t wake up for hours. So it’s your life or neither of us and I can’t do that to you. I can’t decide for you. If you want to –” Her voice breaks and she looks away for a second. “Go ahead. But it’s your choice, alright? I – if I’d kept you here, I would be keeping you here and – no. Your choice.”

Shaking, Leela manages to nod, almost understanding. “I am not a pet.”

Rodan’s eyes drift out of focus and then she laughs harshly. “No. You’re not a pet. Definitely not. I made my choice, and you can make yours when you wake up. And here we are, I guess. Well here I am. You’re out there.” She waves at the window. “Gallows humour, I suppose. Got to laugh at something.”

“I think I hate you,” Leela says slowly, emotions too complicated to put into words.

Rodan smiles again. “I hate me too. Just – oh Rassilon, Leela, be happy, okay? Go on and save worlds or whatever but be happy. Because – whatever this is, this sacrifice or whatever, I don’t want to die –” Her voice stops completely. She is crying now, and wipes at her eyes half-heartedly. “The Doctor should help you. I – I think K-9’s got an emergency call, and you can get in contact with him. So you’re not – stuck, or anything. I just –” She sighs, looking straight at the camera. “I’m almost too far away. Goodbye, Leela.”

“No!” Leela yells, voice cracking.

“Ten seconds.” Rodan swallows, eyes terrified. “I love you. And I think I know what that means now.”

Leela shivers, clenching her hands. “Goodbye,” she says, because she does not know what else to say and this cannot be happening, it cannot.

Rodan gives her one last fleeting smile and then screams. Her body flickers and it looks horribly like a regeneration. It cannot be, though, because there is no finish, no formation of a new body. She just blurs and shifts and shifts and _shifts_ and never stops and never stays, it just goes on and on and on and above it all, she is screaming. Her voice changes but the screaming continues. It is worse, it is a hundred times worse than her first regeneration and it never ever ends.

Until it does.

Until there is a body that is only barely a body, that is not recognizably any of Rodan’s regenerations but somehow looks like all of them, but smaller, broken, and bleeding.

The only sound from the scanner is static.

Leela sobs once, and then manages to stop, shaking.

“Transmission ended,” K-9 says. “Implementing orders from Mistress Rodan.”

“Shut up!” Leela screams. Her knees hit the floor and she curls in on herself. She cannot cry. She will not cry because she is a warrior and warriors do not cry.

There is suddenly a body surrounding her, arms holding her close to a chest, legs around her hips and she almost, almost breaks.

“Go away,” she mutters, not even bothering to look at who it is.

Whoever it is sighs. “I know.”

She fumbles for her knife and pulls it out, hand shaking so badly she is more likely to hurt herself than him.

His hand gently removes it, tossing it away. “Go ahead and cry. It’s okay, Leela. It’s okay.”

“No,” she mutters into his chest. “It is not.”

One arm holds her tightly, the other comes up to rest his fingertips on her forehead. “May I?”

She is shaking, body unable to hold still, and she is not even sure what he is asking. “Yes,” she says, because the silence stretches and she cannot bear the static from the scanner.

His mind slips into hers, not quite the all-including feel of Rodan’s – her mind stutters. He is kind and barely there, calming, gentling, quieting. “Shush, Leela. I know. I’m here.”

“No,” she tells him again, not sure why.

He laughs, almost, and holds onto her. “Trust me, I am here.”

She growls, but leans into his chest. The voice sounds familiar, now that she can think again. “Doctor?”

“Yes,” he says, letting his head rest on hers. “I am.”

~~~

The first thing he does is move her TARDIS into his. Neither TARDIS likes this plan. Leela does not know this until the Doctor remembers to tell her.

She misses Rodan.

Rodan would have told her immediately.

He shows her to her old bedroom and tucks her into bed. His hand rarely leaves hers, his mind constantly brushing and calming. Even when she lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, his hand remains around hers.

She misses Rodan.

Her grasp was different, her mind different too.

Leela yanks her hand away from his and shoves the covers into a ball. Curling around it is not the same, but it is better than nothing. She does not sleep, only dozes fitfully. The Doctor watches her.

She misses Rodan.

The Doctor’s TARDIS turns on the lights hours later. The Doctor tries to take her hand again. She knocks it away and gets out of bed herself. She dresses herself, feeds herself, curls up against the door to her TARDIS by herself. The Doctor hovers, trying to fuss. She does not let him.

She misses Rodan.

It takes days or weeks or months. She is not sure. One day she wakes up and her head is clear.

“I want to go to Gallifrey.”

She does not know where that came from, only that she has a driving urge to be on Rodan’s homeworld, as if this will allow her to be that step closer to her.

“Leela,” the Doctor says slowly. This is the velvet one, with long hair and no companions.

She is sitting in the jump seat, staring blankly at the console. “Travelling only makes me think of her.”

“Oh.” The Doctor fiddles with the console. “And Gallifrey –?”

Leela does not know how to explain because it is not something she truly understands. “I want her but not what we had,” she says instead.

It makes no sense to her mind but evidently it does to the Doctor, because he puts the TARDIS, his TARDIS into flight.

When they land, he stares at her. “You don’t have to leave. I mean, you’re welcome to, but – if you wanted to come, you could –”

For the first time in months, she smiles. It is not much of a smile, but it is there. “No. Time, I think, that I found a home.” She swallows. “Take care of my TARDIS.”

“Leela, Leela, Leela,” the Doctor says, smiling back. “I will. Got a planet in mind, telepathic inhabitants. He’ll be happy as – as, well, a happy thing, I guess. We’re – I parked on Mount Cadon, hope you don’t mind, it is a bit far out of the way, but I thought – you won’t want the Capitol and this area – will you need –”

Her smile is slightly more real. “No. Me, and my knife. We can get by. Unless you happen to have a bow.”

She does not expect a response, but he grins, and pulls one from underneath the console. “I thought you might – want one. And – a tent, or anything? Is there nothing – Leela, you are my companion, you must know how much you matter to me.”

She shakes, because she does know, but she cannot matter to anyone else, not so soon. “I need to leave.” She grabs the bow and quiver from his hands and runs for the doors. They are closed.

“Leela,” he says, sobering. “Take care.”

She nods, looking at him. “I will try.” With that, she opens the doors and is gone.

~~~

There are legends even on Gallifrey.

They speak of Rassilon and the other founders. They speak of the Dark Times and of the world since then. They speak of heroes and demons, gods and devils, things that cannot be and things that must be.

And some –

Some speak of a woman living on the slopes of Mount Cadon, the only alien on the entire planet. Apparently, she married a Guard. Apparently, they left the Capitol because it was too restrictive. Apparently, they spent years living together. (In some of the stories, the Guard still works in the Capitol, but travels out to see eir alien wife when ey is not on duty.) (In many of the stories, the Guard is the only reason the alien can stay. This is used as an introduction to Gallifreyan law for Loomlings: aliens are not allowed on Gallifrey, except as spouses of Gallifreyans, which happens so rarely as to be irrelevant.) Apparently, that area of Mount Cadon has been cleaned of the predators that otherwise freely roam. Apparently, this is due to the alien woman.

But these are just legends and nothing more.

(The Houses around Mount Cadon warn their little Cousins: Do not go out in the woods at night.)


End file.
